It's All Related

Today I read three things that are all related.

First, I read this article by Brad DeLong, (Keynesian) economist at Berkeley, about offshoring. There's a lot wrong with what he states up-front is a "simple model — not a realistic model, an unrealistic model" including omission of the effects of increased specialization and the wide effects of maintaining vs. violating the principle of economic competition. He also takes a totally unsubstantiated swipe against Say's Law, which I found highly irritating. But the reason I'm bringing this up is because his analysis makes use of interpersonal utility comparisons, which Austrian economics rejects as methodologically invalid.

Then, I read this article by Jonathan Wilde that directly discusses the interpersonal utility comparison issue.

That second article was in response to this article by John Kennedy, which I read last — and which was, amusingly, actually a response to Brad's article! Isn't it neat how everything ties together?

I was impressed by the quality of the comments on that third article. It's almost enough to make me wish I had a comment system, too. (Almost, but not enough. Making my own software, I probably wouldn't have a problem with spammers, but trolls are more difficult…)

John's article was addressed to consequentialists, and non-consequentialists were supposed to just be quiet for a bit. While I often sound like a deontologist, my reasoning actually has consequentialist foundations. So I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be quiet for this one or not. :)

This is the sort of thing that makes blog-reading fun.